A Halfhearted Cure for Loneliness

Seven hundred and thirty days with no cuddling and no intimacy. I would hold hands with a man and it would lead to nothing. We would kiss and there would be no “afterwards.” I would go on a date with someone from 2-4 times and then I would stop talking to them. There wasn’t a strong, genuine enough connection with any of the people that I met online that would make me comfortable enough to be intimate with them or even be in a relationship with them.

But the truth is I probably could have dated any of those men. It was my past that was holding me back from being with someone again. After being single for so long, I craved a man to love me. I craved giving my heart to a man. To feel a man’s touch. To be taken care of. And the way I was going about finding a suitable one just wasn’t working out for me.

Two years without meaningful intimacy will do crazy things to a woman. Until I started to think outside of the box.

A few days a week when I would see him walk past my desk, I would look at his face. He was the epitome of misery. His lips were shaped in a downward pout, his eyes drooped, his cheeks were puffy, he wore dark circles under his eyes. I don’t think I ever heard his voice raise higher than a whisper and that’s only in the rare times I would hear him speak. He’d always appear expressionless when he’d mutter, “Hey how’s it going?” I would reply, “Good, how are you?” .That was the extent of it as he wasn’t particularly attractive to me with his massive head and the little Brillo padded fluff on the top of his head.

I never cared to get to know him. He was a guy with the bad sense of fashion (I used to call him Seinfeld), someone who seemed to have no direction in his life. He didn’t even speak in a normal tone, and yet when he started talking to me I lavished in the attention. At first I was completely against being anything with him that wasn’t ‘just friends.’ Then he grew on me because he made me laugh. Well, at first he made me laugh and gave me attention. Then I realized all his jokes consisted of was repeating the same material again and again. Sometimes it made me feel embarrassed or bad about myself. Then he started to ignore me.

He crossed a line with me before we even started when he went on a sexual rampage about his recent ex girlfriend the acclaimed coke head who used him for I honestly don’t even know what. Maybe he had a big penis. I wouldn’t know, because although we were “romantically” involved for about I don’t know 2-3 months, I never even touched or saw his “thing.” When a girl is horny and only sleeps with people who she dates, bad things happen. She lowers her standards. Immensely. They get lowered. They just do. And then, nothing happens. Which is probably the worst part of this entire thing.

That’s the irony of it all. I won’t sleep around because I respect my body and I’m afraid of being hurt, of being vulnerable, I don’t trust a man with my body and heart. But my emotional state suffered being with this person and I’m happy we never took that step. I thought maybe he was a “nice guy” but he was warped and twisted with a dark secret and an alcohol issue. It was chaos. And my issue still remains. I still want to find a guy whom I can have a meaningful relationship with, who I can be intimate with and actually FEEL something. I don’t want it to be empty and I don’t want my loneliness to cloud my judgment.

It’s all so complicated to be a woman. Afraid of what others will think of you and afraid what you may think of yourself, when really it probably isn’t such a big deal. This is like an eternal problem with me. I take life too seriously, love too seriously and in the end I’m still alone because I choose the most troubled males to date.